Friday 2 November 2018

The Wealth of Capitalism Is a Creation of Government

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In discussing the ideological reasons that compel mainstream economists to posit the neutrality of money, we have shown that the intervention in the economy by entities of collective action (the state, treasury, central bank) is indispensable for the modern Promethean economies that have provided mankind with continual per capital income growth. 

The modern economy is not a spontaneous product of unhampered markets and would collapse if we were to retract the institutional props on which the modern monetary order rests. Notably, it depends on money originated by a monopolistic and sovereign  issuer of the currency. In the absence of this arrangement, it would not be possible to sustain, let alone accelerate, the kind of ongoing economic growth experienced in the West during the past 250 years.

The meaning of progress turns out to consist in overcoming precisely the conditions that are supposed to be in harmony with free market precepts (Gold standard or the denationalisation of money), which are really efforts to repress that part of the growth of the money supply that is crucial for the Promethean upsurge.

Classically liberal proposals are effectively reactionary. Living up to them makes for stagnation or needlessly inhibited growth. 

Creation of money ex nihilo is the prerequisite for investing in perennially innovative, ever more productive solutions that increase the living standard on the basis of self-perpetuating economic growth. 

The vibrant markets of capitalism are a creation of government. They cannot survive without government managing the monetary system. 

No government, no fiat money.

No fiat money, no capitalist expansion.

No capitalist expansion, no modern levels of wealth.

Without a stable mechanism by which to expand the money supply to provide enough credit for investment in excess of savings, it would not be possible to attain the enormous growth rates that have been the hallmark of the capitalist age.

Investments that rely on the given money supply, especially on the given level of savings, lack the prospect of additional demand which is tied up in money lent out (savings) and cannot serve as effective demand for the products to be newly produced. To that purpose, new money, newly created money, fiat money, a viable fiat money system is needed.

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